Arcane Battlegrounds Review

Arcane Battlegrounds is a new base building game based on the well-known MMORPG Arcane Legends. Does it live up to its pedigree?

Arcane Battlegrounds is, unfortunately, little more than a Clash of Clans clone with an Arcane Legends style coat of paint. It features the now all too familiar cycle of building a few buildings, waiting while resources tick up, training an army and then unleashing them in battles where the player is limited to simply deploying their soldiers and watching the show. Deploying troops in the right spot and the right order is important, as otherwise swordsmen might get distracted by buildings while cannons pick them off, or slow, powerful siege troops might get swamped by foes before they reach the walls. Troops that are expended in a battle are lost, so armies must generally be replaced after each battle.

As players work though the game, buildings must be upgraded constantly to unlock new and stronger troops and increase the rate of resource acquisition. There is a long single player campaign, but it lacks any kind of story or any drive to push though it, so generally it is simply a way to grab resources quick and beef the base and army up enough to compete in multiplayer.

Multiplayer consists of attacking randomly selected players that are roughly matched to the playerâ€™s level. A Guild system is available and players can help each other with building and send reinforcements to guildmates. This is one of the few bright sparks in Arcane Battlegrounds. This is the first time I have seen a game of this type where players can help each other with building their base. Considering the enormity of the timers in the game this is a welcome addition.

Arcane Battlegrounds features the same ho-hum freemium tropes that have been seen in pretty much every CoC type game. There are timers for building and upgrading buildings and timers for training troops. These timers are just as frustrating as ever. The game also takes quite a long time to start up, even if it was running in the background, which isnâ€™t really conductive to the short bursts of gameplay that freemium often demands.

Arcane Battlegrounds is not a very good looking game. Its drab buildings and dull coloured troops really pale compared to older games like Samurai Siege and even Clash of Clans. The buildings are not much better, with plenty of muted brown and grey involved. For a mobile game in 2014 it is poor. There are a few oddities as well like placeholders appearing in game.

The sound falls into the same not so great category. Dull fantasy music drones on the background and never really changes and combat is just a bit too quiet and subdued for a game of this style.

Arcane Battlegrounds is no different from the overload of Clash of Clans games that exist on Android and there is no reason to even look in its direction when far superior games like Samurai Siege are available. With poor graphics, long timers and overly familiar gameplay it is worth a miss.

Arcane Battlegrounds Review Rundown

3.0

Graphics/Sound - Arcane Battlegrounds looks and sounds a couple of years old and is quite dull.

8.0

Controls - A solid interface.

4.0

Gameplay - Arcane Battlegrounds lacks any innovative gameplay and pales when compared to superior games available on Android.

4.0

Replay Value - Timers and the unoriginal gameplay hamper any long term enjoyment.

4.0

Overall - Arcane Legends is overshadowed completely by better games of its type and is simply not worth playing.